A fork in the road Iemma's choice on planning

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The Premier, Morris Iemma, has the opportunity in the next few
days to put Sydney on the right course for building a viable,
sustainable city - or to set it back more than a decade. Mr Iemma
has to sort out how his split of planning and infrastructure will
work in practice. He may be about to get it seriously wrong.

In last week's reshuffle, Frank Sartor became Minister for
Planning, and Michael Costa Minister for Infrastructure. The
arrangement raises the question: who is in charge of planning
critical infrastructure? The push is on to split planning in two.
The possibility has nearly all serious planning figures in the
country shaking their heads in horror. As the Herald's
Campaign for Sydney has shown, the two must not be separated.
Planning the city and planning transport are two parts of the same
process, and must be carried out in the same agency with one person
in charge. Decisions in each area affect the other profoundly;
their repercussions feed back into each in a continuous loop. A
plan for a suburb will be very different depending on the extent to
which transport to it relies on private cars, buses or some form of
rail.

Providing the right transport link in the right mode is the only
way in a free-market system that a government can have a serious
effect on decisions on land use, housing density and job location
effectively and efficiently. In Sydney that should mean anchoring
those decisions around a fixed rail transport line in new major
corridors, with links in old corridors to regions which now lack
them.

Mr Costa's new infrastructure agency should be the project
manager to deliver the works, not the planner. That arrangement
would play to Mr Costa's strength and dovetail with his Finance
portfolio responsibility. NSW needs innovative ways to finance
overdue urban capital works. His job should be to determine how
best to deliver services and projects.

The other changes Mr Iemma has so far announced in this area are
sound. His decision to split planning from the delivery of
infrastructure recognises that the two functions require different
skills and that a big project should be managed at arm's length
from the government consent authority to avoid corruption. The old
Department of Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources was
unworkably big. The natural resources subportfolio had a wide
reform agenda. Lumped together in one department it has distracted
attention from the main game, which is developing the much-delayed
25-year metropolitan strategy for Sydney.

That strategy is nearly complete. It conforms to most of the
principles we have advocated in the Campaign for Sydney. The Iemma
Government should complete it, release it, adopt it and act upon it
without delay. It must not be junked. The metropolitan transport
strategy is complete, but is yet to be released. It, too, must be
adopted and acted upon, but as an integrated transport plan, linked
directly to the metropolitan strategy's land-use goals. It must
rebalance the transport portfolio over the next 25 years. Sydney
has every right to expect it will not be just another roads
plan.

The Ashes burst into flame

On Sunday Australia's cricketers suffered a defeat which
ordinarily might have left the nation stricken with disappointment.
To falter at the winning post, as Australia's last two batsmen,
Brett Lee and Michael Kasprowicz, did in the second Ashes Test, was
a cruel reward for one of most gallant last-wicket stands in Test
history. Indeed, in the 128 years Australia and England have been
playing Tests against each other, no match has had a closer finish
than this one. Arguably none has had such an exciting finish,
either. All the more reason, one might think, for Australians to
feel crushed by the result.

Yet this does not seem to have happened. Yesterday, one sensed
that most Australians had accepted the loss almost cheerfully, and
it was not hard to see why. If Lee and Kasprowicz had scored the
three runs needed for victory and Australia had gone two Tests up,
interest in the series would almost certainly have died. Everyone
would have assumed that nothing much had changed - that England was
as weak as before and that another dreary, one-sided series lay
ahead. Instead, cricket followers can look forward to the most
gripping Ashes contest since England last won almost two decades
ago. Sunday's result has re-energised an Ashes tradition that had
been ailing. SBS says just over 2 million people watched the final
moments of the Test on Sunday, which was more than any of its
football telecasts attracted during the 2002 World Cup. Even bigger
cricket audiences may tune in before the series is over.

Australians can take pride in the graciousness with which
Australia's captain, Ricky Ponting, accepted the defeat on Sunday -
a graciousness not matched by the Edgbaston crowd, a section of
which could be heard jeering when Ponting was called to the
microphone at the post-match presentation. Perhaps Ponting could
afford to be gracious: informed opinion still leans towards an
Australia victory in the series, especially if Glenn McGrath can
return soon from injury. But the issue is now clearly in doubt.
Australia is a team of ageing champions, many of whom are past
their best, while England is a team on the rise. Moreover, the
English have apparently learnt to be as determined and combative on
the field as their opponents. All of which adds to the public's
interest in the looming battles. Suddenly, today's Australians are
coming to realise what previous generations of Australians always
knew - that nothing in cricket is more enthralling than a
hard-fought contest against the old enemy.